Playboy February 1974

Playboy

February 1974

Well, it's February, 1974, and atop the singles charts is Barbara Streisand, with 'The Way We Were.' My main man Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra are in second place, but 'Love's Theme' eventually would reach Number One. That single, with its chucka-whucka sound effects, prefigured the advent of disco. Rrrright-on, baby !

 

Sitting at position number 6 is one of the stranger chart entries in that chilly Winter month of February: 'The Americans,' by Byron MacGregor, a Canadian broadcaster. This single was a spoken-word tribute to - you guessed it - the Americans, to the accompaniment of 'America the Beautiful.' In the era of inflation, the 55 mile-an-hour speed limit on the interstate, the economic damage of the Arab oil embargo, spiritual and psychological anomie, and the increasing mistrust of the Nixon administration, MacGregor's single was a rebuke to 70s fatalism. Not as effective, in my opinion, as the Kink's 1979 LP track 'Catch Me Now I'm Falling,' which was a similar treatment of the U.S. in decline.
 

 

The February issue of Playboy is on the stands, and it's a good issue. Interestingly, while the traditional (dyed-) blonde is on the cover, elsewhere in the issue is a short portfolio of an 'ethnic' woman, a rarity in those days. The eponymous 'Butterfly Girl' is Ratna Assan, from Indonesia.

Looking at the contributors to this issue reveals a lineup of some of the nation's most prominent authors, writers, actresses, and intellectuals: 

 

Richard Rhodes (b. 1937) wrote the celebrated nonfiction books 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb,' 'Farm,' and 'Deadly Feasts.' Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004) was of course one of the major cultural critics of the postwar era, and John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), one of the eminent economists of his time. Nat Henthoff (1925 - 2017) was a well-known author and columnist. 

 

Frank M. Robinson (1926 - 2014), who assists with music reviews at Playboy, would become a major author and screenwriter in the 1970s and 1980s with such works as 'The Glass Inferno,' 'The Prometheus Crisis,' and 'Blow Out.' Robinson also authored the nonfiction work 'Science Fiction of the 20th Twentieth Century An Illustrated History.'

 

Top-billing actress Candice Bergen (b. 1946) writes about her trip to China as a member of a motley assemblage of 'artists' and lefty agitators. 

 

And while white, male, urban Jewish men and women are heavily represented, also contributing to the issue are artist Ignacio Gomez and photographer David Chan; diversity is there, if you look for it.....!?

One thing that I always highlight in these vintage issues of Playboy and Penthouse is the high quality of their illustrations. Nowadays magazines and their graphics are dwindling as media enterprises, but 50+ years ago, editors commissioned outstanding pieces to accompany articles. 

For an article by Malcolm Braly about an upstate New York 'fat farm,' where - gasp - the overweight are treated with fasting (no semaglutide in 1974, folks), George Hirsch provides a brilliant painting that calls to mind the subdued, luminous renditions of George Tooker. 

For Sontag's story 'Baby,' designer Gordon Mortensen and photographer Bill Frantz concoct a creepy illustration that complements what is otherwise a too-lengthy, and utterly mediocre, piece by Sontag.

For Bergen's travelogue, Herb Davidson puts together a fine illustration.

The ongoing series, 'Playboy's History of Organized Crime,' sees Peter Palombi channel the sensibility of a pulp magazine cover to craft one of the more striking images in any Playboy of the decade. And there's also a suitably grim depiction, by George Roth ('after Edward Hopper') of a gangster meeting his end in the electric chair.

Sontag may have contributed a dud of a story, but at less than two pages, Henry Slesar's 'Nothing But Bad News' ably delivers black humor. It benefits from a fine illustration by Kinuko Craft.

The cartoons in Playboy could be cruel, especially in those years before the advent of Viagra:

The February interview subject is none other than Clint Eastwood, an actor who rarely gave interviews. He comes across as down-to-earth and unassuming.......carefully calibrated.

But let's not forget the nubile young women ! For February they are the 'Girls of Skiing,' and rather than digitally enhance the coloration of these scans of a five-decade-old magazine, I'll retain their rather faded coloration and provide that nostalgic, Kodachrome-style glow.......

 

And that's how we do Vintage, from those long-ago days of the mid-1970s............